Posted on 10/03/2015 1:28:14 PM PDT by Kaslin
Although the American Revolution resulted in independence for the United States and World War II made it an international power, the American Civil War was arguably the most important war in American history. It truly was an American watershed.
In order to appreciate that war’s significance, it must be understood what the Civil War was about. Contrary to all-too-popular opinion, the Civil War was not about states’ rights. Instead it was all about slavery and white supremacy. As shown in my just-released book, The Myth of the Lost Cause: Why the South Fought the Civil War and Why the North Won, there is compelling evidence that secession and the Confederacy were the result of Southerners’ desire to preserve slavery and white supremacy – not to promote states’ rights.
The evidence of the seceders’ motivations is clear-cut and convincing. Only slave states seceded, and the greater the percentage of slaves and the percentage of slave-owning families the more likely a slave state was to secede. Those states complained that the Federal Government was doing not too much but too little – Southerners wanted the central government to more aggressively enforce slavery, especially to return runaway slaves. They also were upset that other states were passing “liberty laws” to make it more difficult to retrieve runaways. The issue was not who had the power to do what but instead whether their powers were being used to promote slavery. Far from respecting individual states’ rights, they wanted to compel the Federal and other state governments to enforce slaveholders’ rights and preserve slavery.
The strongest evidence of seceders’ motivations is the language they used in their own secession documents. What could be more telling? Six of the seven early seceding states provided clear statements of their reasons for seceding. Their reasons included the election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed extension of slavery into territories; the runaway slave issue; the threat to slavery’s existence with the possible loss of four to six billion dollars in slave property (the largest component of Southern wealth); the perceived end of white supremacy and the resultant political and social equality of blacks and whites, and desperate warnings of the effect all this change would have on Southern Womanhood.
South Carolina’s declaration of the reasons for secession said, “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution [runaway slave return provision].”
As he called for a secession convention, Mississippi’s governor declared, “The existence or the abolition of African slavery in the Southern States is now up for a final settlement.” Citing only slavery-protection reasons, that state’s legislature convened a secession convention. The latter’s declaration of the causes of secession got right to the point in its opening line: “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world.”
Not only did their own secession resolutions reveal slavery and white supremacy as their causation, but the seven states who seceded even before Lincoln’s inauguration immediately began an outreach campaign to other slave states. Their correspondence and speeches relied only on slavery-related issues to encourage other slave states’ secession. They only lobbied slave states.
Much other evidence demonstrates that slavery and white supremacy preservation were the causes of secession and even trumped possible Confederate victory in the war. All efforts to avoid war by compromise focused only on slavery issues. Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said slavery was the “cornerstone” of the Confederacy and Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers had erred in stating that all men were created equal.
Even though it had a tremendous manpower shortage, the Confederacy officially rejected the use of slaves as soldiers (as inconsistent with its white supremacy views) and rejected one-on-one prisoner exchanges for captured black Union soldiers. Just as American colonists needed European intervention to win the Revolutionary War, the Confederates were desperate for British and French intervention; however, they declined to end slavery in order to achieve involvement by the slavery-hating Europeans.
Union victory ended slavery and kept America from being an international pariah. It also resulted in passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th constitutional amendments; these provided the legal basis for ending legal segregation and providing blacks with voting and other civil rights.
Despite the compelling evidence of slavery’s and white supremacy’s roles in fomenting secession, the Confederacy, and the Civil War, too many contemporary Americans cling to the myth that somehow states’ rights were at the root of the Civil War. We need to accept the reality of the racial underpinnings of that critical war in order to contemplate, confront, and overcome the continuing racial tensions in America.
The South disagreed, believing that the Federal fugitive slave law should preempt the Northern states' rights.
Thereupon the Southern states seceded in order to form a new federal government of their own, under which states were not free to make their own laws regarding slavery.
So yes! the Civil War originated as a states' rights issue. It's just that the North was the pro states' rights side........
Except the Southern States still will part of a Rrpublican government with the consent of the governed. In fact they controlled the Supreme Court. Just like Gore vs Bush, Democrats wanted to suppress the consent if the governed and play by their own rules.
Lincoln was a war criminal and a mass murderer. He should have been hung for crimes against humanity.
“The people who were traitors to the principles upon which *THIS* nation was founded were the ones who denied the right of Independence to others.”
Yes, the Confederates were the traitors who denied the U.S. Constitution, re-enslaved freemen who had already gained their freedom, denied the right of suffrage to Southern citizens in order to traitorously usurp the Republican form of government mandated by the U.S. Constitution, and committed manifold other capital offenses.
“The Declaration of Independence says that people have a God given right to leave a government which no longer suits their interests. It is the basis upon which we justified our secession from the United Kingdom. “
Yes, and the Confederate illegally and immorally refused to abide by the provisions of the U.S. Constitution which governed how to modify the government or in the alternative how to lawfully secede from the Union of the United States in the same manner by which a state acceded to the union of the United States. In their contempt for the rule of law and the Constitution, the wannabe Confederates continue to deny the U.S. Constitution and refuse to acknowledge the obligations and rights provided for in the Constitution to change government lawfully and even to secede lawfully.
“The same Principle should have been respected by the US Government in 1861.”
It is the Confederates and their wannabes who are the parties who are refusing to respect the Principle, the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution. So long as they continue to respect these foundations of the Republic, they need to emigrate and join the other Confederate traitors to the Constitution.
Several Northern states, exercising their states' rights, decided that they would NOT actively enforce the federal law which required the return of escaped slaves to their self-styled "owners".
The South disagreed, believing that the Federal fugitive slave law should preempt the Northern states' rights.
Thereupon the Southern states seceded in order to form a new federal government of their own, under which states were not free to make their own laws regarding slavery.
So yes! the Civil War originated as a states' rights issue. It's just that the North was the pro states' rights side........
Not sure what you’re driving at. It is a historical fact however, that Southern Democrats stated before the election that they would secede if Lincoln won.
Correct!
Cheap cotton for northern factories and tariffs on tobacco and everything else the south produced.
Which means that had the South offered a conditional surrender contingent upon keeping slavery, Lincoln would have likely taken it at this same period of time.
I've seen it asserted that the Emancipation was primarily a tool for weakening the South's attempts to get foreign support and to boost the moral of his supporters, plus laying the political ground work for stealing all the money the South invested in slavery by taking them without recompense.
Then why were 93% of them collected in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia?
The modern day irony is the fact that US paper currency is made of cotton..
It’s made of cotton..!
“So how does he/she/it figure that the Union was fighting a war to end slavery?”
The United States Government was obligated by the Constitution to suppress the unlawful Rebellion:
Constitution
Article. IV.
Section. 3.
New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.
The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
Section. 4.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.
It is a requirement written into the US Constitutions. It may have been a state right to refuse to hand back fugitive slaves prior to the US Constitution, but after having ratified it, they must be regarded as having agreed to those terms.
The US Constitution required states to give back fugitive slaves. They could have objected to this requirement prior to agreeing to it, but once they agreed to it, they can no longer refuse to follow it. They voluntarily gave up that "state right."
Note, the seceding states used an unlawful method of seceding knowing the other states in Congress would rightfully defeat the lawful methods of secession.
The Government no longer had the consent of the Southern States, just as England no longer had the consent of the 13 slave owning colonies.
What the rest of England thought was immaterial. The Founders obviously regarded the right of states to secede from England as valid.
The South did win the Reconstruction, until the 1960s.
We were attacked at Fort Sumter, as at Pearl Harbor.
We would have reunited, and become the United States again. But without a lot of the baggage with which we are presently saddled. We would have been a more disciplined and respectful -- and respected -- nation than what we are today.
What tyranny?
The Declaration of Independence is the only thing which gives authority to the US Constitution. The US constitution is the daughter of the Declaration, and therefore stands in an inferior position in relation to it.
The Right of Independence is given by God, the US Constitution was written by a committee of men and is an act of men.
Acts of men do not trump Rights given by God.
And yet, Lincoln permitted New Mexico to choose whether to be a slave or free state, in spite of the Missouri compromise. Nor were a few Northern states not slave states after 1865, although I forget which at the moment.
I come from stock on both sides.
I now know, however, that what I was taught about the war was true only after a fashion. Does that mean I would have or do support slavery? No.
The argument to me is moot. WaPo wrote in 2013 that there are 60,000 slaves in the US and 30,000,000 in the world. This was in 2013.
Our own debt makes us slaves to the debt holders, for which we shall pay dearly.
In short, the war is not the one of the 1800s US. It’s here and now.
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